Your Relationship with Yourself, Part II
Where true confidence comes from and 3 strategies to increase your self-approval.
In Your Relationship with Yourself, Part I, I talked about how to be kinder to yourself through bridging thoughts, approving of yourself even before you change, and forgiving yourself quickly. Those three ideas will help you feel better about yourself and be your own greatest supporter.
In this article, we’re going to talk about confidence, or believing in yourself. The more confidence you have, the better you are at tackling life’s difficult situations. You understand your true nature and what you are capable of. This can greatly improve your relationship with yourself. After discussing confidence, I will also explain three powerful tactics for increasing your self-approval.
Where does confidence come from? Many people suppose that they have to accomplish something or be proficient in some area in order to have confidence. This line of thinking leads to comparing ourselves to others to see if we measure up. We might ask, “Yes, I achieved that goal, but is it enough?” This is a tenuous kind of confidence.
Confidence is a feeling, and therefore it comes from a thought. It does not come from any outside circumstance or event. If we want to generate the emotion of confidence, we need to think thoughts that produce it. We can force beliefs like “I’m so amazing” for a while, but our brain rejects any idea that is too removed from its default conviction. We need to find a viewpoint that is believable and also creates confidence.
Life coaching has taught me that true confidence means accepting our whole selves. The thought could be “I’m outstanding in some ways, and I’m a mess in others. But I accept and embrace my whole self. I’m here for all of it.”
We actually don’t have to achieve any certain thing to be confident. I used to try to add up my good and bad traits and hope that the good outweighed the bad. Or, when I noticed something I didn’t like about myself, I’d say, “But I do this other thing well,” as a consolation for the perceived weakness.
But confidence doesn’t come from believing you’re great all the time or adding up your strengths. True confidence is seeing your flaws and imperfections and loving you anyway. You are permitted to love every part of yourself and embrace it all. All the parts are what make you amazing, not only the parts you “approve” of. Even though your brain tells you some parts are less desirable, you still love those parts. Be intrigued and interested in yourself and your different habits rather than judgmental.
You are permitted to love every part of yourself and embrace it all.
This conceptualization of confidence incorporates reality instead of resisting it. It sounds like this: “I realize that how I am is exactly how I am supposed to be and thinking anything different is arguing with reality. Sometimes I’m not the kind of person I want to be. Sometimes I’m selfish, sometimes I overreact, sometimes I make mistakes, and it’s all okay! Many days I’m awesome, but at times not so much. My value is set no matter what I do or don’t do. I give myself permission to not be perfect. I adopt the idea that ‘I love me anyway.’”
You can be proud of yourself for simply trying. In fact, this is a great way to solidify your confidence. If you tell yourself, “I’m going to be proud of you no matter what,” then you’re not afraid to try new things. The default brain wants to chastise you if you go after a goal and don’t make it. But you don’t have to listen to its ideas. Another option is to direct your mind toward gratitude for yourself for being brave and being willing to live life.
It’s risky to base your confidence on the belief “I’m good at ______ (fill in the blank).” As long as your brain stays on board with that opinion, you’ll be okay. But when it comes across evidence to the contrary, your confidence waivers. What if you tried on “I’m good at _____ sometimes, and sometimes I’m not. It’s all okay”?
True confidence is allowing yourself to suck at something. When you accept all the parts of you, you don’t have to be afraid of coming across some negative aspect of yourself or your life. The lie our brain tells us is that if/when we are perfect enough, then we can have confidence. But that day will never come.
We often use other people’s approval of us to give ourselves permission to feel confident and to believe in ourselves. We mistakenly assume that their admiration is required, but it isn’t. Once we understand how emotions work, and that we can think whatever we want, we can generate whatever feeling we desire.
If you’re trying to adopt the notion “People like me” to increase your confidence, you have to look for evidence of that. When you find something that seems to indicate the opposite, your confidence is shot. It’s easier and more accurate to realize “Some people like me, and some people don’t, and that’s okay. I like me. I approve of me.”
It is common to believe that certain people, traits, or accomplishments are better than others. This is our built-in assumption and it’s important to become aware of it. Our brain views people on a vertical line, some higher and some lower. We conceptualize that some people are better than us, and we are better than some people. When we consider the latter, we feel confidence, but it only lasts if you don’t think about the former.
If you are better than someone else, eventually there will be someone better than you. And that deflates your confidence. Judging others feels good momentarily, but it is impossible to separate it from judging yourself: if they’re doing it wrong, there’s a chance you’re doing it wrong, too.
Because we know that everyone has the same value no matter what they achieve, we need to direct our mind toward the visual of people on a horizontal line. There are many types of different people, but they all exist on the horizontal. They are all equal in value but experiencing different lives.
Think of humans like you would flowers in a garden. Some flowers look similar, but there are no two exactly alike. And yet they are all beautiful. We don’t get uptight when flowers aren’t the same; in fact, that’s what makes them so enjoyable. Our ideas of what is better or worse (including people’s traits, behaviors, and ways of living their lives) are made up. There is no better or worse, only different.
Now that we understand confidence, here are three tactics to help you remember how amazing you are: mirror talk, make a list, and the Quizlet app.
Most of us have unkind assertions about ourselves when looking in the mirror. As I mentioned in Your Relationship with Yourself, Part 1, your brain will refuse positive affirmations if they are too far away from its current beliefs. If your mind has made a formulation about you or how you look, it wants to prove itself correct. It wants to be right more than it wants you to feel good. So we have to find some gentle ways to work around its attachment to your current thoughts.
If your mind has made a formulation about you or how you look, it wants to prove itself correct. It wants to be right more than it wants you to feel good.
Bridging thoughts can be useful for this purpose, as discussed in Part 1. Another method is using mirror talk. The idea here is to come up with a quick, fun catchphrase that you say to yourself every time you see yourself in the mirror. Some examples are “Hi there, buddy!” or “Looking good!” My favorite is “Hey, cutie!” Make it fun and playful. You’re not trying to convince yourself you’re amazing or that you love the way you look. It’s casual.
Forming this mirror talk habit gives your mind something to do besides search your image critically. Say if first thing in the morning, right before you go to bed, and any other time you glance in the mirror. You’ll be amazed at what a difference it makes.
Sometimes you have to consciously guide your brain toward positive things about yourself. Again, not in a repeating-memorized-lines type of way, but a deliberate practice of generating what you want to believe about yourself. One way to do this is by making a list of things you like about you. Commit to this practice once a week (or something other regular time period) and write down at least ten (different) things every time. Identifying this many positive aspects might stretch your mind but keep at it. As with a gratitude journal, knowing you have to list these traits gives your brain something to look out for during the week.
The final strategy for improving your relationship with yourself is to use the app Quizlet. You might have heard of or used this app for creating and reviewing flashcards. It is most commonly used for academic purposes, but I have found it enormously helpful in learning how to talk kindly to myself. The key to this strategy is more than simply making flashcards that convey encouraging ideas. The Speak feature of the app is the most powerful part. If you tap on the card, a voice will read the words to you.
Here are some ideas to put on the flashcards. This list is long to give you many different ideas. Tailor the sentences to your particular needs.
· You’re doing great!
· Hey me, I love you! This is hard; it isn’t easy being a human, but you’re doing great, and I love you!
· Why does it not matter that I have shortcomings and weaknesses?
· Thanks for showing up today. This is hard and you’re doing an amazing job.
· I’m not supposed to be perfect.
· It’s okay to feel all the human emotions, the whole range.
· I deserve love and forgiveness and grace.
· I’m half amazing and half a mess, just like all humans.
· It’s okay that it’s hard; it’s hard for everyone.
· Sometimes I’m negative and that’s okay. That’s just fine.
· Love that part of you that is (fill in whatever your brain tells you is “wrong” with you). Be interested and intrigued by it. Love that part that (another flaw). All these parts make up you, and you are wonderful!
· Say yes to all of it. What if you said yes to the frustration? Yes to your weaknesses, yes to the tears, yes to the negative emotion? There is peace behind saying yes to the entire human experience.
· Listen, I’m not going to beat you up anymore. I want you to be happy and at peace. You deserve that.
· This is what it’s like to be human.
· Lots of people feel this way.
· Loosen your grip on the idea that something is wrong.
The voice on the app is soothing and convincing. For a while, I listened to her read my cards to me every day, anytime I felt down or overwhelmed. Eventually, my brain incorporated the lines into my own self talk. It made a huge difference for me and my day-to-day well-being. It was casual — not forced — and the ideas on the cards were at least somewhat believable.
Creating and maintaining confidence is a life-long process. If you don’t continue striving toward it, your brain will fill in its nonsense. Manage that mind by directing your thoughts to useful and plausible ideas that build and strengthen your approval of yourself.
Don’t wait until you achieved a goal or have someone else’s admiration to believe in yourself. You don’t need those things. You only need to remember the following: “I’m amazing in some ways, and I’m a mess in others. But I accept and embrace my whole self. I’m here for all of it.”
Try this on: “I’m going to be proud of you no matter what.”
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